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Thesis

People from around the world are increasingly taking advantage of the free access to theses and dissertations via Western’s hugely successful Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository (ETDR). The ETDR was designed to provide a simple way to view a variety of current, academic information created or endorsed by the Western community.

Accessing Theses and Dissertations

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) are prepared as text-based PDF files. ETDs can contain non-text elements such as sound, video, and hypertext links. ETDs are available through Scholarship@Western, Western's digital library repository, and also released to the world-wide web with priority in many search engines, enabling scholars worldwide to locate, search, and download Western’s ETDs.

Benefits and Impact

The online repository has allowed academics and their education institutions to reap significant benefits. The most striking benefit is the dramatic increase (50-250 per cent) in citation impact that results from electronic publishing. This leads to increased rewards from universities and granting agencies.

Other benefits include:

publicity for research - authors of electronic theses become more widely known and their reputations are enhanced

easy worldwide access to theses for colleagues and collaborators

easy worldwide access to theses for job and grant applications

increased profile for research institutions

reduced costs at the point of graduation since there is no need to have multiple copies printed